WEI PAN^1,2,3,*, YE HE¹, MENGDONG HE^1,2,3, FEI WANG^1,2,3, LIHUA QIU^1,2

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.4, pp. 1079-1088, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.016934

Abstract Photodynamic therapy (PDT) has emerged as a novel therapeutic modality for cancer treatment, but its therapeutic efficacy is severely limited by the hypoxic tumor microenvironment (TME). Here we designed an innovative multifunctional nano-platform which consists of a hollow MnO₂ shell and internal photosensitizer IR780. It is not only used for multimodal imaging of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), but also for adjustment hypoxic TME to enhance cancer treatment. Hollow MnO₂ can promote decomposition of tumor endogenous H₂O₂ to relieve tumor hypoxia, thereby enhancing the effect of photodynamic therapy. Photosensitizer IR780 generates singlet oxygen under laser irradiation to kill tumor cells,… More >

JIABAO WU^1,2,#, XIAOHUA LIU^1,2,#, LU HAN^1,2, HUA NIE^1,2, YUAN TANG^1,2, YUNGE TANG^1,3, GE SONG^1,5, LIXIN ZHENG^1,4, WEIBING QIN^1,2,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.4, pp. 1013-1023, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.016744

Abstract Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) is a novel class of non-coding RNAs. However, changes in piRNA expression profiles in recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA) have not yet been investigated. The aim of this study was to identify differentially expressed piRNAs in deciduas of RSA patients. Decidua tissues were collected by curettage from recruited RSA patients and normal early pregnant (NEP) women with their informed consent. Small RNA sequencing was used to evaluate the differences in piRNA expression profiles between RSA and NEP. The present results demonstrated that the counts of total piRNA reads in RSA samples were increased compared with those in NEP… More >

HUI-YING JIN^1,2, MAO-SONG PEI^1,2, DA-LONG GUO^1,2,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.4, pp. 941-949, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.016718

Abstract To understand the molecular characteristics of the miR477 gene family of grape (Vvi-miR477) and to predict its target genes, the Vvi-miR477 genes were identified from previous small RNA sequencing data, then phylogenetic analysis and prediction of target gene were conducted. The Vvi-miR477 family consists of two precursor sequences and three mature sequences. The miR477 family members were mostly 19-22nt in length. The sequence is relatively conservative. Vvi-MIR477a and Vvi-MIR477b are located on chromosomes 1 and 2, respectively. These precursor sequences can form the typical stable stem-loop structure. Their minimum folding free energy is −39.10 kcal/mol and −50.90 kcal/mol, respectively. The… More >

CANGZHI JIA¹, DONG JIN¹, XIN WANG¹, QI ZHAO^2,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.4, pp. 1105-1121, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.016655

Abstract N⁶-Methyladenine is a dynamic and reversible post translational modification, which plays an essential role in various biological processes. Because of the current inability to identify m6A-containing mRNAs, computational approaches have been developed to identify m6A sites in DNA sequences. Aiming to improve prediction performance, we introduced a novel ensemble computational approach based on three hybrid deep neural networks, including a convolutional neural network, a capsule network, and a bidirectional gated recurrent unit (BiGRU) with the self-attention mechanism, to identify m6A sites in four tissues of three species. Across a total of 11 datasets, we selected different feature subsets, after optimized… More >

LEJUN GONG^1,2,*, SHEHAI ZHOU¹, JINGMEI CHEN¹, YONGMIN LI¹, LI ZHANG⁴, ZHIHONG GAO³

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.4, pp. 951-960, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.016625

Abstract Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play an important role in many life activities such as epigenetic material regulation, cell cycle regulation, dosage compensation and cell differentiation regulation, and are associated with many human diseases. There are many limitations in identifying and annotating lncRNAs using traditional biological experimental methods. With the development of high-throughput sequencing technology, it is of great practical significance to identify the lncRNAs from massive RNA sequence data using machine learning method. Based on the Bagging method and Decision Tree algorithm in ensemble learning, this paper proposes a method of lncRNAs gene sequence identification called BDLR. The identification results… More >

ZHENGUO SHI^#,*, QIAOYUN WU^#, HAIYAN SHI, SONGTIE YING, LIANG TAO

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.4, pp. 979-988, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.015345

Abstract NLRP3 inflammasome-mediated cell pyroptosis aggravates the development of cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury, and the aim of this study is to investigate the potential utilization of the Chinese medicine, Puerarin, in treating this disease. Through conducting in vitro and in vivo experiments, the present study illustrated that Puerarin regulated LncRNA double homeobox A pseudogene 8 (DUXAP8)/miR-223-3p axis to inactivate NLRP3-mediated pyroptotic cell death, resulting in the attenuation of I/R injury. Specifically, the cerebral I/R injury in rat models and hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R) in primary hippocampus neuron (PHN) cells were inducted, which were subsequently exposed to Puerarin treatment. As expected, we validated that… More >

MENGTING LI^*, YI-ER QIU, KAIFENG ZHENG

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.4, pp. 1089-1096, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.013432

Abstract The effect of the baicalin, a bio-active flavonoid extracted from Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, on the carbon tetrachloride (CCl₄) induced liver fibrosis was investigated. To compare the effect of baicalin on the liver fibrosis, five different groups of rats treated by 100, 200, and 400 mg/kg baicalin were studied. Upon CCl₄ treatment, the levels of procollagen type III, aspartate aminotransferase, aminotransferase, hyaluronic acid, and hydroxyproline were significantly increased, whereas the superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase content were decreased. These changes in the biochemical parameters, which are associated with liver function, were significantly attenuated by the baicalin treatment, suggesting that baicalin can… More >

LIMIN CHEN^1,2, XIAOWEI LI¹, TIANJUN HE², QUANCONG WU², TINGTING CHEN³, JUN HUANG^1,*, YAOBIN LU^1,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.3, pp. 821-828, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2021.016450

Abstract Venom plays several important roles in the life of the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta Buren. Laboratory rearing significantly affected the toxin component of S. invicta. However, the molecular mechanism of the change of venomous components when kept in the laboratory is unclear. In this study, RNA sequencing technique (RNA-Seq) was performed to explore differentially expressed genes in the venom gland of S. invicta at 0, 10, and 60 days after laboratory rearing. The RNA-Seq results showed that the expression of a large number of genes changed. The DEGs were involved in multiple pathways, including proteolysis, serine-type endopeptidase, and allergen. Furthermore,… More >

PEI LIU, ZHE CHEN, XIAOQIONG MA^*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.3, pp. 737-743, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2021.015786

Abstract Sphingosine kinase 1 (SphK1) is an important synthetase during the synthesis of sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) from sphingosine (Sph). Previous studies demonstrated that arsenic trioxide (As₂O₃) could reduce the level of S1P in human gastric cancer cell line MGC-803, indicating that As₂O₃ may inhibit the activity of SphK1. In this study, the effect of As₂O₃ on the SphK1 activation pathway was investigated. Western blot and quantitative real-time PCR analysis were used to evaluate the changes in protein and mRNA levels. The multi-dimensional mass spectrometry-based shotgun lipidomics method (MDMS-SL) was used for the quantitative detection of phosphatidylserine (PS) and phosphatidic acid (PA). The… More >

HUI QU^1,2,3,4,#, RUICHUAN SHI^1,2,3,4,#, BOWEN YANG^1,2,3,4, XI CHEN^1,2,3,4, YUJIA SONG^1,2,3,4, LINGZI HE^1,2,3,4, YITING SUN^1,2,3,4, YUJING YANG^1,2,3,4, ZHI LI^1,2,3,4,*, XIUJUAN QU^1,2,3,4,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.3, pp. 721-735, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2021.015867

Abstract The peritoneum is the most common site of recurrence of gastric cancer (GC). Early occult peritoneal metastasis is difficult to detect by imaging examination. Stratifying the risk of peritoneal metastasis in patients with different Lauren subtypes is of great clinical value. We performed a univariate Cox regression to identify those genes with prognostic value of overall survival (OS) and peritoneal-specified disease-free survival (psDFS) from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. The candidate genes were screened by the Subpopulation Treatment Effect Pattern Plot (STEPP) method. Propensity score matching (PSM) analysis was used to reduce the interference of confounders on the results. Based… More >